Santorelli Historical Media, Inc. is in pre-production on a four-hour documentary film to air on PBS entitled, When Long Island Was Hollywood: The Forgotten Story of the Famous Vitagraph Company of America.

The film will tell the story of two poor uneducated English immigrants, Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton who stumbled onto the ground floor of the movie business while seeking new technology to incorporate into their second-rate vaudeville act.  That technology came in the form of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope.  Albert E. Smith, also a self-taught machinist, converted the Kinetoscope into a camera and in 1896, the Vitagraph Company was formed. 
 
From its studios in Flatbush, Brooklyn, the Vitagraph Company of America, using the American eagle as its logo, became omnipresent not only in America, but throughout the world.  It had the most impressive distribution of any early movie studio in American cinema.  With the assistance of a third partner, financial backer and fellow Englishman, William “Pop” Rock, Vitagraph became the cornerstone of the movie industry and a powerful force in the creation and shaping of American cinema.

By the time Vitagraph sold to the fledgling Warner Bros. in 1925, it existed for twenty-nine years, outlasting all it’s early competitors and acquiring Lubin, Selig, and Essanay. By then the movie business was the fourth largest industry in the world, with Vitagraph as the only movie studio owned by Christians in a Jewish dominated industry. During a time of tremendous immigration, censorship, labor unrest, and mainstream American xenophobia, Vitagraph transformed the newly emerging cinema from cheap, despised amusement, to the world’s dominant mass medium.

Episode One:                “Persistence of Vision, or the English are Coming!”
Episode Two:               “Furnish the Movie, I'll Supply the War: Hearst, Yellow Journalism and the Spanish-American War”
Episode Three:             “J. Stuart Blackton and the First School of Directors”
Episode Four:               “Nickel Madness in Gotham City”
Episode Five:                “Vitagraph High School”
Episode Six                  “Art Imitates Life”
Episode Seven:             “Propaganda and the Great War”
Episode Eight:               “Living the American Dream”
Episode Nine:               “The Motion Picture Patents Company: Edison and His Control of an Emerging Industry”
Episode Ten:                “Wall Street and the Exodus of J. Stuart Blackton”
Episode Eleven:            “Rebuilding a Four Square Block”
Episode Twelve:           “The Return of J. Stuart Blackton”
Episode Thirteen:          “The Fledgling Warner Bros.”
Episode Fourteen:         “The Crash of 1929 and the Making of a Liberal”
Episode Fifteen:            “The End of an Era”
Episode Sixteen:           “The Legacy of a Pioneer Motion Picture Studio”

This documentary film is endorsed by the American Film Institute.

Director: Thomas Santorelli
Writers:  Thomas Santorelli and Eric Stange
Advisors:
Anthony Slide: Senior Advisor, Film Historian, Writer
Academy Award Winning Kevin Brownlow: Advisor, Film Historian, Writer
David Traxel: Professor of History, Humanities Dept., University of Sciences
Curtis Martin: Professor of Political Science, Merrimack College
Roberta Pearson: Professor and Senior Lecturer of Film and Television, Cardiff
William Uricchio: Professor of Literature, and Media Studies Massachusetts Institute of Technology
William Brauninger

The 2006 opening of The Loft apartments. The former Vitagraph movie production branch studio is converted into 31 loft apartments. Picture in the center is Pam Greene, former Islip Town councilwoman.  To her right is film historian and building manager Thomas Santorelli.  To her left is owner Carl Dworman. Photo by Bob Coppola / Town of Islip.

New York State Senator Owen H. Johnson, 4th Senate District, Babylon secures a $2,000.00 grant for Santorelli Historical Media, Inc. to install a historical site sign at the Vitagraph building, 94 Fourth Avenue, Bay Shore.  This was the location of Vitagraph’s branch production studio in 1916. Pictured is Senator Johnson and Thomas Santorelli, President of Santorelli Historical Media, Inc.  Photo by Gordon Canary.

Marcelino pan y Vino, Spain 1955 b/w A film restoration by Thomas Santorelli.

 

 

Thomas Santorelli has completed the restoration of an independent European classic film called Marcelino pan y Vino, Spain 1955 B/W. Both audio and film were restored from old prints.

Synopsis: Based on the myth that all good boys go to heaven, Marcelino is abandoned by this mother as a newborn infant and left on the steps of a monastery. The monks raise Marcelino after a search for his mother turns up unsuccessful and it is assumed that his mother has died and is in heaven. Marcelino is home schooled by the monks and by the time he is six is wondering and asking about his mother and the mothers of the monks. The film has strong Christian symbolism including Marcelino's imaginary friend, Manuel and the issue of obedience. Marcelino is warned by the monks that he should never go in the attic because there is a big man up there that is not to be disturbed. With curiosity getting the best of Marcelino, he wanders up in the attic to meet a giant wooden statue of Jesus nailed to the cross. He talks to Jesus and brings him bread and wine. Jesus becomes animated and offers Marcelino a wish in return for his kindness.

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In Production (working titled) La Poeta Napoletano

 

Armando Torre was born in 1930 in Naples, Italy. He emigrated to America in 1958 and settled into Bay Shore, Long Island, New York. Although he is a trained and talented fine arts painter and sculptor, he is a noted poet that writes in his native Neapolitan dialect.

A child prodigy in fine arts, Torre and his family suffered during World War II when the Nazi's occupied Naples. They were shuffled from shelter to shelter living in abject poverty with days when the family didn't eat at all. He was a witness to the revolt by the Neapolitan street boys, known as the scugnizzi in September 1943. This turned out tobe an historical incident known as the Four Days of Naples, when youngsters armed with primitive weapons such as stolen guns, hunting rifles, muskets from World War I, and molotov cocktails, drove the Germans out of Naples on the forth day of fighting.

Torre went on to study art and writing with notable artists such as Eduardo DeFilippo, Ciro Arnes, Giuseppe Garigliani, Nicola Ascione, and other great artists, some who were part of Italy's new film genre, Neo Realism.

Torre's poetry uniquely reflects these experiences of Neapolitan culture, war, poverty, food, family, nature, and love.